Benefits And Difficulties In Commencing The Recovery Journey

Last week I wrote about three choices we may need to make before we begin our journey to recovery from past hurt and internalised painful emotions. I wrote about choosing to deal with our shame, by moving any self-blame to where it really belongs, on the perpetrator. Choosing to remove the primary hindrance to recovery by accepting responsibility for the internalised painful feelings, and finally, choosing to rebuild relationships with those we have hurt through behaviours that emanate from the internalised pain.

The benefits of addressing shame by choosing to blame the perpetrator of my childhood abuse, should have been obvious to me, but they were not. Shame had become a part of who I knew myself to be, and as strange as it might sound, I did not want to give it up. Blaming myself was a safe alternative to being angry; and shifting that blame to my abuser would expose me to red hot anger that I might not be able to control. I resisted this choice also because it required that I revisit something that I had buried. Not forgotten. Just buried. Why would I want to dig all that pain and fear and shame up again? My counsellor had a good answer for that question. “If you will not do it for yourself would you do it for the people you love? If they are in any way paying the price for the anger that you have cloaked with shame, why would you not want to change that? The major difficulty for me was reliving my abuse and getting in touch with the injustice, the cruelty and the sheer evil that was perpetrated on a little boy. The benefit was the realization that in making this choice I had begun to destroy the power that my abuser wielded against me. As long as I insisted that the blame was mine not the abuser’s I was giving up my power to change.

Accepting that our internalised emotions are our responsibility, is also a difficult choice. Sometimes when we are faced with the need to do that, we feel like we are being victimised all over again. It is much easier to blame another person for our painful emotions than it is to accept that we are responsible for any response that we are continuing to make to a past hurtful event. The benefit of at last accepting that responsibility is the personal power if restores to us. Not the power to get revenge, but the power to moderate and control our damaged emotions. The power to choose how we are going to think and feel about the past. The power to channel the deep feelings our hurtful experience aroused in us, in a healthy and positive direction.

It is true that as children we do not always have the capacity to deal with emotional pain. It is not to be wondered at that we internalise them. The unfortunate reality is that hurt children continue to do the same thing with painful emotions when they become adults. I have heard many adults say that their capacity to build and maintain healthy relationships has been deeply damaged by their inability not only to deal with past hurtful events, but present ones as well. It is daunting but nevertheless rational to accept to say that the hurtful behaviour was the responsibility of the perpetrator but the anger I feel is mine.

Understanding that we may have projected our pain on to people we love in the present, and making a choice to seek to rebuild those relationships, so that the people who love us feel safe, also has its difficulties. It may require us to apologise and seek their forgiveness. Someone has said that the six most difficult words in our English language are, “I am sorry.”: And “I forgive you.” For us to apologise requires humility and honesty. For family members to forgive us may seem to them to be unfair; to do so may make them feel vulnerable. Healing wounded relationships may take time, but the results are eminently worth it.

There is an unexpected benefit in being forgiven by another. It is the very best way to learn how to forgive others. As a Christian I have always found great comfort in the teaching of the Bible that encourages us to forgive others as Jesus has forgiven us. His forgiveness of us is absolute and is not so much what we deserve but is a gift of love. When we experience forgiveness that we do not deserve, from someone who loves us dearly, that is the most precious gift in the world.

Next week I will write about forgiveness as part of the process of recovery from past painful events. This week you might like to make two more lists. In the first one jot down what the prospect of forgiving a person who has hurt you makes you feel, and in the second list write down the potential benefits of both being forgiven and forgiving another, may be.

God Bless

Graeme                                                                 

The Cost of Fear

Fear is of course a common response to threat and in this time of pandemic it is impacting every fibre of society. In a positive sense fear helps us acknowledge the extent of the danger implicit in the threat of a deadly and highly contagious virus and to respond to it in practical and common-sense ways. Personal hygiene, social distancing, the wearing of masks and even the total lockdown of cities are appropriate responses to a pandemic that has killed millions across the world.

What begins however as a healthy response to a real and present event, brings with it other threats to which we also respond with fear. Damaged economies, personal financial difficulties loss of jobs and employment opportunities and family stress related to forced isolation and working and studying from home to name just a few. A lack of obvious and likely solutions to either the virus or these additional threats, becomes a secondary cause of fear far more dangerous than the initial fear caused by the pandemic.

The absence of a panacea for fear creates an inward panic that expresses itself in ways that negatively impact the individual, their relationships and ultimately the whole of society. Anxiety and depressive disorders with the attending loss of hope and motivation are of course fear related, and while they are serious and often debilitating conditions there are some very resources available for those who seek to find a solution to and support for these mental health issues

More serious in the long term is the reality that anger is rooted in fear and is potentially the most dangerous force known to humanity. In its milder manifestation it is visible in the social media pages. Cynicism, sarcasm, conspiracy theories, malicious gossip and vicious personal attacks on politicians and others are common expressions of anger born out of fear. In its most damaging form, it manifests as violence. Domestic violence results in at least one death of a woman every week and literally hundreds of physical and emotional injuries.  Violence against emergency service personnel, the wanton damage during demonstrations, or even the refusal to abide by isolation rules made to protect others are acts of anger generated by fear.

Much of the fear and anger we see and experience at this time is not primarily caused by the current threat. Over the years many of us internalise painful emotion and it forms a grid through which we filter information about new and current threat and informs the way we react to it. For example someone whose past trauma involved strangers or people in authority, may continue to have extreme anxiety that relates to the same type of person regardless of there being no evidence that that anxiety is justified.

It is helpful to take the opportunity of understanding the particular filter you use and explore its origin, its importance to you, and the unintended negative consequences of your reactions to perceived threat being so strongly influenced by internalised painful emotion.

Next week I will write about how we might address ways of minimising the effects of fear on our lives. In the meantime, here a suggestion. This week keep a daily journal and log the expressions of anger or depression you become aware of and reflect on their relationship, if any, to fear.

Keep Safe.

Graeme.